


now the world is only white noise

by eskandarrohani (erohani)



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Coming of Age, Gen, Implied Kairi/Sora (Kingdom Hearts) - Freeform, Jealousy, M/M, One-sided Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Pre-Kingdom Hearts I, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29316129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erohani/pseuds/eskandarrohani
Summary: “Oh, Riku,” Sora’s mom says when you come to get him for your Saturday morning tradition of picking mango and heading off to the Play Island. “You just missed him. He and Kairi stepped out five minutes ago.”“Guess I got left behind!” you tell her, mouth making a shape that might be a smile.One day Sora forgets to wait. One day you stop trying to pick him up.
Relationships: Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	now the world is only white noise

Things are different lately.

Not in any obvious way, like when you came home from kindergarten and the goldfish swimming around in the tank wasn’t Tora. Not like when Kairi rearranges Sora’s neat row of figurines from that one anime that you guys keep meaning to watch together. Not like when Tidus insists you all go get fortunes from the temple on the other side of town. (Not because there’s anything wrong with the temple you’ve all been attending since you were children, but because he likes the smile of the head priest’s daughter.)

Things are different in the way that seasons change, the way that the years draw creases into the corners of your mom’s eyes. Change sneaks up on you like that. One day you put on your favorite shirt and discover that it no longer fits.

“Oh, Riku,” Sora’s mom says when you come to get him for your Saturday morning tradition of picking mango and heading off to the Play Island. “You just missed him. He and Kairi stepped out five minutes ago.”

“Guess I got left behind!” you tell her, mouth making a shape that might be a smile.

One day Sora forgets to wait. One day you stop trying to pick him up.

Things are different now.

(And maybe it is a little like that situation with Tidus and the priest’s daughter.)

*

There’s a strict pecking order among the neighborhood kids. You ended up at the top kind of by accident.

“Ugh, Riku, no fair,” Sora wheezes from where he lies sprawled in the grass, his shirt covered in the muddy outline of your sneaker treads. He coughs, definitely for dramatic effect. “You know I have a hard time dodging that stupid backflip-thing!”

“You wouldn’t need to dodge if you stopped trying to whale on me while I’m down.” You help him up, trying not to smirk too much. The rising handspring took a lot of time to learn, but it’s been worth it to see that particular blend of fury and awe on the faces of all your friends. Sora, most of all.

“Geez, gimme a break,” Sora groans. He ruefully rubs at his chest. There’s dirt underneath his fingernails. “As if it wasn’t already hard enough to beat you.”

“Gotta work harder than that if you want to keep up,” you drawl, tipping your sword onto your shoulder the way Sora’s favorite anime protagonist always does. _Look at me_ , you think, desperate for him to see the reference in your body language, to acknowledge that you continue to grow and excel, that you still have miles of open road ahead. _Look at me._

Sora just sighs explosively and bops himself on the forehead with the broad side of his wooden sword. “It feels like every time I think I’m catching up, there’s _even more_ space between us than I realized,” he laments. Casting you a pouty look from behind his sword, he grumbles, “But I guess you wouldn’t know that feeling, Ri-ku!”

The sun dips behind the mountains on the horizon, and your shadows stretch out long and thin across the earth.

You pretend to think. “No,” you agree, tone airy. “Definitely not.”

*

Sora’s at home sick with the flu, which leads to the rare instance of you walking to school with Kairi alone. There’s a gap between you two in place of Sora. You don’t remember things being this disconnected with Kairi, but the more you think about it, the harder it becomes to pinpoint the last time you spent quality time together.

You feel sort of bad about that.

(But her time has been occupied by Sora more and more often lately, so really who’s the one at a loss here?)

“What kinds of worlds do you think we’ll get to explore once we leave?” you ask, because this is almost all you think about when you’re alone.

“I haven’t thought about it much,” Kairi says breezily, which makes your mouth pull into a line. “I’m just trying to take the adventure one step at a time. Let me show you.” She pauses, loafers shuffling to a stop as she unzips her school bag and rifles through the contents. She pulls out a scanned page from a book, proffering it. The page has deep grooves from being folded and unfolded. Kairi’s colored in an illustration of shells bound together in the shape of a star, purple and pink pencil crayons blended together to create a petal-soft hue.

“What exactly am I looking at?”

“It’s like a lucky charm for voyagers,” Kairi says. She’s smiling, but her arms cross over her chest. Her eyes flit away from your face. “I’ve been collecting shells for them. I thought we’d need all the help we could get.”

“Not a lot of faith in the raft, huh?” It’s meant to be a joke, but it comes out spiny and seeping poison. You’ve been slipping like this a lot lately; Sora doesn’t seem to notice, but she never fails to catch you at your worst.

Kairi snatches her page back, eyes glossy. “If you don’t want one, you can just say so,” she mutters and your nostrils flare.

Always at your worst.

*

When you think about it, childhood sometimes feels like a smear on the horizon. It becomes an indistinguishable blur of meandering around the pier, squinting at the sun’s glare off the mottled back of the sea, and wondering when Dad would finally come home.

Mom worked a lot, and you spent just as many mornings making your own breakfast as you did evenings shyly eating at Sora’s house, dragging your spoon through bowls of poi as he regaled his mom with ornamented tales of what you both did all day. Sometimes, you’d contradict his stories for fun, just to watch his face turn pink like the inside of a guava, and you’d kick at each other under the table.

These dinners might have been the best part of your childhood. They’re random blips of bright color in a progressively faded series of memories. Something to look back fondly on, not something to recreate.

You’re not sure exactly when or why you decided that for yourself. It’s like you woke up one day and slammed the door shut on your childhood.

So it’s a little strange to see Sora going about life like his childhood is ongoing. For him, life is an endless summer of sand between the toes, trees to climb, and popsicles to dye his mouth blue. Sora is skinned knees with cartoon character bandaids, barefoot walks to school, gummi bears tossed overhead and caught between crooked teeth.

For you, he’s 365 days of the year, plus Leap Day. He’s dawn to dusk, but also night. He’s Destiny Islands in all its saturated color.

Which is why, when you stare out at the two silhouettes sitting together on the pier, you’re seized by the need to get the hell out of here.

Your whole body _hurts_ as you watch Sora and Kairi. Do they know they forgot to ask you to hang out? Did they do this intentionally?

 _Oh_ , you think. _Oh, I don’t like this feeling._

*

Kairi arrived on Destiny Islands on a largely unremarkable day. It was deep summer, the air sticky-thick and tasting of ozone from the typhoon lurking off the shore of the southernmost islands in the archipelago. The day after she moved into the mayor’s house, the storm exploded across the horizon.

The palm tree in front of your house hadn’t survived that typhoon, the winds wrenching it free and sending it crashing into the earth, a few scant feet from your bedroom window. You still remember the sound it made when it gave in—like the sky splitting in two.

You stand hip-deep in the ocean, squinting in the darkness while tethering your boat by the Play Island’s pier. The tide is unusually swollen tonight, the undertow tugging at your ankles. Greedy waves rush across the shore, threatening to swallow the beach whole. The raft on the other side of the island will never survive the night if you don’t get over there quickly.

“—iku!” Kairi’s voice clings to the tail end of a gale and you turn, catching a glimpse of her boat bobbing on the frothy crest of a wave right before you’re bowled into the sand by the punishing current. Purple veins of lightning sprint across the black sky, illuminating Kairi’s pale face, her bare arms stretched over the hull of her capsized boat. Thunder smashes overhead.

She’s close to the pier. Close enough that she should be fine. But the raft won’t be. You stagger to your feet, blinking away seawater, tears hot on your wind-bitten cheeks.

Kairi doesn’t need your help.

You turn away. Every sucked-in gasp of air burns in your lungs.

She’ll be fine.

*

What makes the Secret Place secret?

Is it the hushed conversations shared within its cool, winding tunnels? The wishes of the artists who cover the stone walls with drawings the way stars fill the night sky?

Was there a secret before there was a place to keep it?

Who determined that it was a secret to be kept?

There is a door.

For as long as you can remember, there has been something whispering in the cave. It whispers to _you_. Something old, something sad, something trembling with rage.

It whispers to you through the Keyhole, fierce and insistent and _always getting louder_. Clearer. More familiar.

You tried to explain it to Sora once, back when you were kids. But he thought you were trying to scare him. You weren’t, not on purpose. But you never quite managed to shake the way the hairs on the back of your neck prickle whenever someone mentions the Secret Place.

There is a Door.

The storm smashes the island and you run blindly through the rain and darkness. Kairi is still outside somewhere. Sora would have seen the lightning and come running.

You run, you run. Through shivering vines and through tunnels that echo with the static of rain. There is no source of light in the Secret Place, not right now. There’s nothing here to guide your way.

_There is a Door._

You skid to a stop, sneakers screeching across the smooth limestone. There’s nowhere to go. This is the belly of the cave. This is the end. There is nothing but The Door.

It’s completely silent.

There’s no more whispering. It’s only you, you and your ragged breathing and all the ugly thoughts swimming around in your head. You and the bitterness on the back of your tongue and the increasingly familiar sight of the back of Sora’s head.

There’s nowhere to go.

This is the end.

You look up.

**_There is a Door._ **


End file.
